Later on, water resources were 'enclosed' through dams, groundwater mining and privatization schemes. The cylinder springs into life. Furthermore, mining and refining activities consume vast amount of water and generate large quantities of CO2 emissions. Much to TV execs’ consternation, the TiVo let viewers of recorded programming breeze past commercials. In 2009, China produced 95% of the world's supply of these elements, and it has been estimated that the single mine known as Bayan Obo contains 70% of the world's reserves. "The 'enclosure' of biodiversity and knowledge is the final step in a series of enclosures that began with the rise of colonialism. Thanks also to all those who have given feedback, support and insights since, including Alex Campolo, Casey Gollan, Gretchen Krueger, Trevor Paglen, and Sarah Myers West at the AI Now Institute and Olivia Solis, Andrej Petrovski, and Milica Jovanovic at the SHARE Lab and all the wonderful folks from SHARE Foundation. But featuring a tuner and timer, Philips device was the first to let television junkies record and save their favorite programs for later. One illustration of the difficulty of investigating and tracking the contemporary production chain process is that it took Intel more than four years to understand its supply line well enough to ensure that no tantalum from the Congo was in its microprocessor products. And not just because Facebook paid $2 billion for the device’s parent company foreseeing a future of social interaction and virtual vacationing provided by VR. When in November 2015 DeepMind Technologies Ltd. got access to the health records of 1.6 million identifiable patients of Royal Free hospital, we witnessed a particular form of privatization: the extraction of knowledge value. Nothing speaks to Iwata’s legacy more than the company’s game-changing Wii (pun intended). Vandana Shiva, The Enclosure and Recovery of The Commons: Biodiversity, Indigenous Knowledge, and Intellectual Property Rights (Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology, 1997). Commodore’s 8-bit brown and taupe lo-fi 1982 masterpiece ranks with record-keeper Guinness as the best-selling single computer in history. And though the 1984 JVC VideoMovie wasn’t the first model on the market, it became iconic when Marty McFly lugged it around in 1985’s Back to the Future. Was there an action following the question? When a human engages with an Echo, or another voice-enabled AI device, they are acting as much more than just an end-product consumer. L.A. Times entertainment news from Hollywood including event coverage, celebrity gossip and deals. Think of the gear you can’t live without: The smartphone you constantly check. The device comes in several styles, such as gunmetal grey or a basic beige, designed to either “blend in or stand out.” But even the shiny design options maintain a kind of blankness: nothing will alert the owner to the vast network that subtends and drives its interactive capacities. Yet the material details of those costs remain vague in the social imagination. But that kind of convenience didn’t come cheap. Need proof? Chris Ely, “The Life Expectancy of Electronics,” Consumer Technology Association, September 16, 2014, https://www.cta.tech/News/Blog/Articles/2014/September/The-Life-Expectancy-of-Electronics.aspx. 30 The notion of digital labor, which was initially linked with different forms of non-material labor, precedes the life of devices and complex systems such as artificial intelligence. But decades earlier, the first commercial cable box that would inspire so many others was an unassuming wood-paneled console manufactured by Pennsylvanian company Jerrold Electronics, sporting three-way sliders for dozens of different channels. Long ago, when the volcanos were alive and roaming the plains freely, Tunupa - the only female volcano – gave birth to a baby. “Responsible Minerals Sourcing,” Dell, 2018, http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/conflict-minerals?s=corp. This is an interaction with Amazon’s Echo device. It is silently attending. The scale of resources required is many magnitudes greater than the energy and labor it would take a human to operate a household appliance or flick a switch. Christine Negroni, “How to Determine the Power Rating of Your Gadget’s Batteries,” The New York Times, December 22, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/26/business/lithium-ion-battery-airline-safety.html. The Salar, alongside the neighboring Atacama regions in Chile and Argentina, are major sites for lithium extraction. Though it took a long, winding road to mass market success, the videocassette recorder, or VCR, got its start in 1972 with Philips’ release of the N1500. While at first Apple struggled to rationalize its comparably barren Apple TV-verse, Roku was offering thousands of channels and the most partnerships with the biggest players. Online shopping from a great selection at Digital Music Store. David S. Abraham, The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age, Reprint edition (Yale University Press, 2017), 89. When massive data sets are used to train AI systems, the individual images and videos involved are commonly tagged and labeled. After English scientist Michael Faraday published a study in The Philosophical Magazine in 1848 about the use of this material as an electrical insulator, gutta percha rapidly became the darling of the engineering world. Eeeeeeerrrrrrroooooooahhhh ba dong ba dong ba dong psssssssssssh. 13 No game system has done more to illustrate the omni-generational appeal of interactive entertainment. From Rodney King and citizen journalism to America’s Funniest Home Videos and unscripted television, the camcorder did as much to change the world from 1983 to 2006 as it did to record it. At the end of 19th century, a particular Southeast Asian tree called palaquium gutta became the center of a technological boom. 28 But IBM’s sales pitch—bringing Big Blue’s corporate computing prowess into the home—helped make this a wildly successful product. Jessica Shankleman et al., “We’re Going to Need More Lithium,” Bloomberg, September 7, 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-lithium-battery-future/. Our apartment is furnished with period mahogany furniture with french curves and polished brass inlay, and the walls are covered with period artwork. Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy” video helped, too. The iPod’s importance extends far beyond music. He is leading SHARE Lab, a research and data investigation lab for exploring different technical and social aspects of algorithmic transparency, digital labor exploitation, invisible infrastructures, and technological black boxes. The stack that is required to interact with an Amazon Echo goes well beyond the multi-layered ‘technical stack’ of data modeling, hardware, servers and networks. The woman makes a faint nodding gesture, and carries the child upstairs. Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, “On the Multiple Frontiers of Extraction: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism,” Cultural Studies 31, no. Yet you draw on it every time you issue a simple voice command to a small cylinder in your living room: ‘Alexa, what time is it?”. Their use peaked around 2001, as faster alternatives that carried data over cable lines arrived. For now, they’re largely playthings for hobbyists and videographers. Each object in the extended network of an AI system, from network routers to batteries to microphones, is built using elements that required billions of years to be produced. (It was both a PR stunt and an epic humblebrag: Cooper called his biggest rival at AT&T.) Where not dominated by mines, this is pockmarked with graves, many holding the bodies of miners who have died over the centuries digging for tin.” All business? The outputs of machine learning systems are predominantly unaccountable and ungoverned, while the inputs are enigmatic. Hence the need for a visualization that can bring these connected, but globally dispersed processes into a single map. The Segway—as hyped and as mocked as it has been—is a defining example of “last mile” transportation, an electric scooter designed to make walking obsolete. From the 2020 Olympics to Broadway shows, here’s a look at some major events around the world that have been affected by the new coronavirus. In a last-ditch effort to save their supply chain, the British passed a ban in 1883 to halt harvesting the latex, but the tree was already extinct. The entire information age? That Polaroid photographs so dominated 80s-era family albums and pop culture gives the square-framed, often off-color snaps a retro appeal that today is celebrated by enthusiasts and aped by billion-dollar apps like Instagram. 11. They’re cheaper and accessible to the millions of Americans who still lack broadband access. Two of Nauman's early auction records were for monumental neons, both walls of blinking punning phrases: Sotheby's New York hammered down One Hundred Live and Die (1984) to the Benesse Art Site, in Naoshima, Japan, for $1.9 million in 1992, and five years later sold Good Boy/Bad Boy (1986–87) to the Daros Collection in Zürich for $2.2 million. Though the phonograph was invented in 1877, it was the Victor Talking Machine Company’s Victrola that first made audio players a staple in most people’s homes. Even industry-friendly sources like the World Shipping Council admit that thousands of containers are lost each year, on the ocean floor or drifting loose. Amazon advertising campaign, “All-New Amazon Echo”, September 27, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyvZ41XjUjY. In his book A Geology of Media, Jussi Parikka suggests that we try to think of media not from Marshall McLuhan’s point of view – in which media are extensions of human senses That quantification often runs on very limited foundations: datasets like AVA which primarily shows women in the ‘playing with children’ action category, and men in the ‘kicking a person’ category. Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands. But read from top to bottom, we see the story as it begins and ends with a human. Sure, the world had personal computers before the 5150 was introduced in 1981. But their impact will live forever, like the movies they captured. John Vidal, “Health Risks of Shipping Pollution Have Been ‘Underestimated,’” The Guardian, April 9, 2009, sec. 29 If you read our map from left to right, the story begins and ends with the Earth, and the geological processes of deep time. Long before cellphones became commonplace, beepers were the way to stay in touch on the go. He invented the first magnetic clock, many early automatons, and the megaphone. Where medieval alchemists aimed to transform base metals into ‘noble’ ones, researchers today use rare earth metals to enhance the performance of other minerals. 6 This device was capable of playing chess against a human opponent and had spectacular success winning most of the games played during its demonstrations around Europe and the Americas for almost nine decades. (Did the user feel heard?) Pedometers have been around for centuries (seriously, look it up), but it was Fitbit that helped bring them into the digital age and to the masses. The 3210 is regarded to be the first phone with an internal antenna and the first to come with games like Snake preloaded. The search engine giant turned the device into the center of its smart home strategy with hopes of ushering in an age of interconnected devices that will make everyday living more efficient. Sony’s Walkman was the first music player to combine portability, simplicity and affordability. The most severe costs of global logistics are born by the atmosphere, the oceanic ecosystem and all it contains, and the lowest paid workers. And a few represent exciting but unproven new concepts (looking at you Oculus Rift). But it forever set the standard for the way human beings interact with computers. Wurman, Peter R. et al., System and Method for Transporting Personnel Within an Active Workspace, US 9,280,157 B2 (Reno, NV, filed September 4, 2013, and issued March 8, 2016), http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=09280157. For these commercial ventures, cargo shipping is a relatively cheap way to traverse the vascular system of the global factory, yet it disguises much larger external costs. Thinking about extraction requires thinking about labor, resources, and data together. Verizon is said to have poured $100 million into marketing the device. Marty Cooper, an engineer with Motorola at the time, first demonstrated the technology by making what’s regarded as the first public cellular phone call from a New York City sidewalk in 1973. This map and essay will be on display there as part of the 'Artificially Intelligent' show from Sep 6 - Dec 31, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyvZ41XjUjY, https://nacla.org/news/bolivia-bets-state-run-lithium-industry, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/26/business/lithium-ion-battery-airline-safety.html, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-lithium-battery-future/, https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2017.1303425, https://www.cta.tech/News/Blog/Articles/2014/September/The-Life-Expectancy-of-Electronics.aspx, https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/AFR6231832016ENGLISH.PDF, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8676.2008.00035.x, http://time.com/money/5262923/amazon-employee-median-salary-jeff-bezos/, https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibility/conflict-minerals-white-paper.html, https://www.philips.com/a-w/about/company/suppliers/supplier-sustainability/our-programs/conflict-minerals.html, http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/conflict-minerals?s=corp, https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2018_Progress_Report.pdf, http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/rmt2017_en.pdf, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution, http://www.worldshipping.org/industry-issues/safety/Containers_Lost_at_Sea_-_2017_Update_FINAL_July_10.pdf, https://www.mining-technology.com/features/featurethe-false-monopoly-china-and-the-rare-earths-trade-4646712/, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/nov/23/tin-mining-indonesia-bangka, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-08-23/the-deadly-tin-inside-your-smartphone, https://www.wired.com/2014/06/inside-amazon-warehouse/, http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=09280157, https://storage.googleapis.com/p4-production-content/international/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/35f0ac1a-clickclean2016-hires.pdf, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11263-015-0816-y, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/business/yourmoney/25Stream.html, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/03/google-deepmind-16m-patient-royal-free-deal-data-protection-act. What did we miss? With Amazon Mechanical Turk, it may seem to users that an application is using advanced artificial intelligence to accomplish tasks. “Apple Supplier Responsibility 2018 Progress Report” (Cupertino CA: Apple, 2018), https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2018_Progress_Report.pdf. We start with an outline: an exploded view of a planetary system across three stages of birth, life and death, accompanied by an essay in 21 parts. Trebor Scholz (London: Routledge, 2012), 80. Why use live ammunition to disperse a crowd though?? What really made the iPhone so remarkable, however, was its software and mobile app store, introduced later. 32 Priced at just $1 (with film that was similarly inexpensive) when it was introduced in February 1900, the Brownie took cameras off tripods and put them into everyday use. Kate Crawford is a Distinguished Research Professor at New York University, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New York, and the co-founder and co-director of the AI Now Institute at NYU. Vincent Mosco has shown how the ethereal metaphor of ‘the cloud’ for offsite data management and processing is in complete contradiction with the physical realities of the extraction of minerals from the Earth’s crust and dispossession of human populations that sustain its existence. Standardized cargo containers allowed the explosion of modern shipping industry, which made it possible to model the planet as a massive, single factory. The Trinitron was the first TV receiver to win a vaunted Emmy award, and over the next quarter century, went on to sell over 100 million units worldwide. It’s necessary to move beyond a simple analysis of the relationship between an individual human, their data, and any single technology company in order to contend with the truly planetary scale of extraction. They play a role in color displays, loudspeakers, camera lenses, GPS systems, rechargeable batteries, hard drives and many other components. Sierpinski triangle or Sierpinski fractal. Most importantly, it allowed users to easily upload all that data to the company’s website for ongoing analysis, encouragement or guilt. Such unrestrained thirst for new resources and fields of cognitive exploitation has driven a search for ever deeper layers of data that can be used to quantify the human psyche, conscious and unconscious, private and public, idiosyncratic and general. 9 At this moment in the 21st century, we see a new form of extractivism that is well underway: one that reaches into the furthest corners of the biosphere and the deepest layers of human cognitive and affective being. Hardly. Yet they are inscribing and building those assumptions into a new world, and will increasingly play a role in how opportunities, wealth, and knowledge are distributed. 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